St. Croix: Then and Now!
By ! Tom Carroll
18 Jan 2008
St. Croix is an unincorporated territory of the United States. It is the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands: 28 miles long and 7 miles wide. St. Croix has flown seven different flags and been colonized by Spain, Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, the Knights of Malta, Denmark, and the United States. Total island population is approximately 60,000 living on 83 square miles.
Arawaks and Caribs inhabited St. Croix prior to European colonization. Christopher Columbus visited the island on November 14, 1493, at the Salt River and called the island Santa Cruz (Holy Cross). In the seventeenth century, Dutch and English settlers, who soon came in conflict with one another, settled the island. Eventually the Dutch abandoned their settlement. The English settlement was soon destroyed by the Spanish who retook the island in 1650. They in turn, however, were immediately ousted by the French.
The island was owned by the Knights of Malta after being bequeathed by Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy, governor of the French colony of St. Kitts, in 1660. Five years later, they sold it to the French West India Company. Under Governor Dubois, the colony became profitable with over 90 plantations growing such crops as tobacco, cotton, sugar cane, and indigo. After Dubois's death, the colony declined and Europeans abandoned the island until 1733 when it was sold to the Danish West India and Guinea Company. The company placed no national restrictions on colonists and the island soon attracted Spanish Sephardic Jews, Huguenots, and English settlers, the last of which came to dominate the island. Sugar soon became the major crop.
Slavery was abolished in 1848, but in 1862, St. Croix received a shipload of East Indians that were indentured on the island for five years. There was a labor revolt by former slaves in 1878 when much of Frederiksted, one of the island's two towns, was burned in a labor revolt now known as the "Fireburn".
In 1917, Denmark sold the Virgin Islands to the United States for $25 million in gold. The U.S. feared the islands would fall into German hands and be used as a base for attacks against the United States and its interests in the western hemisphere. In return, the United States backed Denmark's claim to Greenland.
Although the U.S. Virgin Islands remain under the U.S. flag, the islands are an unincorporated territory with a non-voting delegate to the United States House of Representatives. Residents are U.S. citizens, but have no vote in national elections and generally do not pay taxes to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, though taxes are paid, using U.S. law, to the Virgin Islands Bureau of Internal Revenue.
For more than a century the yellow brick and masonry building standing in the harbor of the main town of Christiansted served as the Dane's customs house. Construction began in 1750 and the building, with a gracefully proportioned 16-step staircase, has changed over the years with a second floor added around 1830 that was once the town's post office. Today it is listed on the National Registry of Historic Landmarks and serves as the headquarters for the National Park Service.
Fort Christiansvaern was constructed around 1749 and was partially rebuilt in 1771 after hurricane damage. The large yellow brick structure sits on a point in the center of Christiansted harbor. The structure is star shaped when viewed from above and is maintained by the National Park Service as an historic monument. The park has five preserved historic structures and interprets the Danish economy and way of life in existence on the island from 1733 to 1917.
The landscape of St. Croix is dotted with the ruins of more than 300 sugar, cotton, and cattle plantations that dominated Crucian life between 1750 and 1950. A typical sugar plantation contained wind, animal, and steam mills for grinding the sugar cane; a factory for processing crushed cane juice into sugar, rum, and molasses; shops for craftsmen; cattle and mule pens; a workers' village and a hospital; wells, water cisterns, and the planter's great house.
The 12 acre Estate Whim is typical of the agricultural plantations originally laid out in the 1730's by the Danish West Indian Company. The first records of ownership were in 1743 when cotton was grown on the estate. By 1754 sugar had become the main crop and so it continued until the 1920's when sugar, long since an unprofitable industry on the island, gave way to cattle. Whim is the oldest sugar plantation museum in the Virgin Islands. The estate includes the great house, cook house, privy/bath house, three kinds of cane processing mills (animal, wind, and steam), a watch house, a carriage house, and several foundations such as the workers houses and factory.
Estate Little Princess began as a 24-acre sugar plantation as early as 1671. In 1733, Denmark purchased the Virgin Islands from France and 8 years later the estate was purchased by the Danish Governor Frederik Moth. In 1764 his son-in-law, Peter Heyliger, moved onto the property and built the great house. By that time, the estate contained a sugar cane crushing windmill, a second mill for water storage, and a sugar/rum factory. In the 1830's a hospital building was added along with an overseer's house. A small village occupied by slaves and later labourers, numbering up to 140, also stood on the property. Today Estate Little Princess houses the offices of The Nature Conservancy's Eastern Caribbean Program.
Frederiksted, population 732, is on the west end of the island and is home to Fort Frederik, constructed to protect the town from pirate raids and attacks from rival imperialist nations. Frederiksted is often referred to as "Freedom City" by locals because the town was the site of the emancipation of slaves in the then Danish West Indies on July 3, 1848 at Fort Frederik on the waterfront. Frederiksted maintains its original seven-street by seven-street city design and includes St. Patrick's Catholic Church built in the 1840's and its catholic primary school, the Customs House, the 19th century apothecary, and many other buildings; some which due to hurricanes past have fallen into ruins.
St. George Village Botanical Garden of St. Croix (16 acres) includes 19th century Danish sugar plantation ruins and is home to over 1500 native and exotic species and varieties. St. George is dedicated to conservation and preservation of both the historical and living collections on its grounds that include: bromeliads, cactus and succulents, a conservation garden, an exotic rainforest, heritage gardens, orchids, ornamental ferns, a native arboretum, a naturalized forest, sansevieria, and Puerto Rican royal palms that line the entrance drive.
St. Croix is a colorful island with a beautiful people, a varied and captivating history (hurricanes notwithstanding), and a pleasant climate that I recommend to your attention.
